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by DaniloDias 2101 days ago
Rephrasing what someone wrote in an uncharitable way is a toxic form of communication that will limit your ability to experience diversity of perspective. It annoys everyone around you and will hurt you in the long run.

Instead of slapping malignant narratives on people, try asking explorative questions that invite the OP to clarify or make an ass of themselves.

1 comments

I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't follow the aforementioned blogger and don't live on the west coast. That said, your response is interesting, how is my query toxic? To be honest, I don't even think I'm being uncharitable; if a previously reliable information source starting being unreliable then I would expect folks to pay attention to notice that and cease to use it as a source.

Since you have an opinion on this, what sort of questions should I have asked the OP?

To be explicit; I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious.

“are you advocating for continuing to follow a blog that is known to give misinformation because you like the writing style?”

If you look at op’s comment, there is no mention of style.

I also have no visibility into misinformation from the blogger. Not sure that OP does either.

With respect to his weather writing, he’s been around for quite a while and is perceived as authoritative. He had a radio show dedicated to the weather on NPR. This isn’t some rando with a blog.

Questions you should have asked: “how do you feel about this posting where he makes this claim that is clearly misinformation?”

You may be right about your above questions- but as an outsider looking at this thread, I don’t see why you believe the things you do and I don’t know why OP would ever agree to that phrasing. You assumed conflict rather than misunderstanding by asking ~“are you advocating reading misinformation because it’s well written?” Is a question that assumes someone knows your context.

Trying not to be adversarial here- just underlining where reasonable people would not be super thrilled with the questioning style.